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FIAT Spider Boot
On my FIAT Dino, I got a slightly beat up but workable Boot cover but it only had one of the plastic things that hold it in place. The car was also missing the 2 hooks on the back that hold the cover on, I purchased those from SuperFormance. But no one had the little plastic thing, I tried to find one used and didn't so I broke down and made one. Since I also own a FIAT Spider I took one off my 124 spider boot but it is different from the FIAT Dino. Not much different and at first it looked like my FIAT Spider's parts would work but the angle on the tabs is just a little different.
I used 18gauge steel and bent it up, welded the tabs and it took me longer than I would like, probably close to 6 hours total, so much for a quickie project.
| The first step was to make a mold and wooden version of what I needed using the other side for a model, just make a mirror image of it. |
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| I then roughly shaped the new cover in my vise and cut the corners so that they would fold in nicely. After that I put the thing in my hydraulic press and put some steel on top and pressed it into shape. |
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| This is how it looked when I pulled it out of the press, I probably could have hammered it into shape but the press allowed me to have a "smoother" curve on the corners more like the originals. |
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| Here are the tabs that get welded in and hold the cover on, when you click on this one its a rather large pic, so you can print it out and trace it (after scalling it) |
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| Here the tabs are welded into place, this was quite tricky to get the right location and angle, they are not welded in straight and the location is kind of critical since it will affect how the tonneau will look. I used my 124 cover part to measure it up and made changes based on the other Dino one I had, they were very close in the angle and only the fore-aft location was different. |
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| Here it is in the oven after powder coating |
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| I powder coated with Wrinkle Black Powder because it hides imperfections and it makes it look better than it is. Kind of overkill for something that no one will ever see. |
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| Looks pretty good if I do say so. |
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| And here it is on the car, I am all happy now. For the last few months the top has been exposed to the sunshine and now its not. With the FIAT Spider boot in place it looks like a Dino should. |
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